Rejoining the company, I endeavored to carry on a conversation with them, but I fear I made little headway, so deeply was I absorbed in the wonderful panorama that lay before me. Raising my eyes from the shimmering, island-studded and beauty-bestrewn sea to the blue above, I uttered an ejaculation of surprise at what I beheld. There I saw "the airy navies" of which Tennyson had written under the spell of an inspiration which must have been wafted from this unknown land, but marred by the hostile environments of his own. Every quarter of the heavens disclosed graceful barques sailing hither and thither, passing and repassing each other, gathering in groups, filled with people, many of them holding mute communications with my companions, as though friend were talking with friend, without utterance, sign or gesture. "I am beyond the confines of earth," I said to Xamas. "This is a higher and spiritual sphere, and I am not Giles Henry Anderton, but his disembodied spirit." "You are at fault. You are within the mundane sphere, but with a people infinitely in advance of yours--a people who, by evolutionary processes, have unlocked a large proportion of the secrets of Nature and the Universe, and turned them to ennobling ends, not to selfish purposes. These facts will come to you in time, and you will be convinced. "See," he continued, "the city is slowly coming into view across the horizon." My glance followed to the point indicated, and I saw a city of ineffable magnificence, softly rising from the bosom of the deep, as though obedient to the wand of a master magician. Soon I could see that it swept around the broad semicircle of the bay, many miles in extent and artistically perfect in contour, the land rising gently from the strand into a grand and massive elevation, cut into great squares and circles, and crowned with noble buildings, great and small, in a style of architecture which embraced all the beauties and none of the blemishes of European and American creations. It was the full and perfect flower of the crude buds of other lands. For a time my companions remained silent as I contemplated the entrancing scene and drank in its beauties. Then Xamas interrupted me: "Yesterday the allied armies of the Western Nations entered the capital of China, and are now bivouacked in the Forbidden City, from which the Empress, Emperor and Court have fled." I shook my head incredulously: "When I sailed from New York six months ago there was no thought of war between any of the Western Nations and the Chinese Empire. Russia may have invaded one of its provinces by way of reprisal. That is a possibility."